


xenophilia, and other assorted peculiarities

by violentdarlings



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Atlantis: Legacy Series - Various Authors
Genre: AU after fifth Legacy novel, Body Horror, F/M, Fuck the Genii, Inappropriate sexual situations, Love means never having to apologise for your claws, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Spoilers for Legacy, Wraith Feeding, Wraith Physiology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-08-22 01:52:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8268253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentdarlings/pseuds/violentdarlings
Summary: Rodney and Jennifer find their way back to each other, after Quicksilver.AU where Rodney stayed Wraith.





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks Legacy for taking my raging lady boner for Jennifer/Rodney and throwing sexy Wraith feeding in there. Like I didn't have enough dirty dreams already.

They do it a few ways as they start to adapt to it; Jennifer lying down, Rodney sitting beside her, or face to face standing, and he catches her when she inevitably falls. But this is not one they’ve tried, and Jennifer doesn’t even know if Rodney will go for it. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

“Feed on me,” she says lowly, too stressed to phrase it more gently. There’s four bullet wounds in his chest and stomach, and his face is alarmingly drawn, and the blood is pumping out alarmingly fast through his T-shirt and staining his leather coat. Rodney looks at her like she's speaking a foreign language.

“What?” he barks, and she hushes him sharply.

“Now,” Jennifer hisses, and Rodney just gapes at her, still deliciously himself even with the sensory pits and the clawed hands and the white hair that is just a little longer than it was before.

“Now? Are you crazy?” he retorts just as quietly, and she’s so close she can smell him, God, he hasn’t let her get this close to him since he came back and maybe she is a bit crazy, maybe just a little. The only way they can both fit in their current hiding space – offworld, a small cupboard barely big enough for one – is Rodney sitting back against the wall, Jennifer splayed on his lap, her mouth just a few inches from his. There are footsteps coming closer, the source of the bullets that recently went through Rodney when he went to shield her against the gunfire, and honestly, fucking rogue Genii, Jennifer’s just about had enough today and they’ve only been offworld an hour.

“You’re bleeding,” she snaps, and gestures down to herself. She’s splattered with his dark blood from where she was pressed up against him briefly, before he squawked and drew away as much as he could in a cupboard designed for storing small objects rather than a full grown woman and a newly transformed Wraith.

“I’m not doing it, and that’s that,” Rodney says, unusually concise, and she could _shake_ him when he’s like this, being stubborn just for the sake of it.

“Do you want to bleed out in a cupboard?” Jennifer replies, furious. “Just do it. It won’t hurt me and you need it. Now – mmph!” Rodney must be nearing the limits of his patience, because abruptly he’s smacked a palm over her mouth to keep her quiet and she could slap him, she really could, but she settles for glaring instead.

“Shut up,” he snaps, as if her glare was an audible thing rather than just an expression of ire. “Do _you_ want to get caught or do you want to have a hope in hell of rescuing the others?”

Jennifer sticks her tongue out childishly, and a moment later she has to clap her own hand over Rodney’s mouth because his eyes have rolled back and a growling noise she can only classify as a moan rolls up from deep in his throat. Because, um, _gross_ , she’s accidentally _licked_ his feeding slit, and it would be fucking disgusting except that noise, Christ, that Rodney had made, like a deeper tone of the sound he used to make when she took him down her throat, his hands buried in her hair. And later she’ll consider it a sign of his distraction, that he’d even touched her with his feeding hand in the first place, when usually he uses his off hand for just about everything, hiding the other behind his back as though it will make everyone forget that it’s there.

“Did that turn you on?” she mumbles behind his hand just to be spiteful, her tongue darting out and tasting the frankly bizarre inner membrane of the handmouth, as the Wraith call it. The taste is... odd, but it's well worth the response she gets; Rodney’s eyelids flutter closed, but they quickly pop open as a dark green flush rolls down his cheeks. He mutters something that might be ‘shut up’ or ‘I can’t help it’ or ‘why the fuck aren’t you disgusted with me’, but Jennifer’s not paying attention, not when a tiny shift of her weight suddenly brings her into contact with his cock, iron hard underneath her. “Oh my God, it did turn you on!” she hisses in scientific delight, and Rodney removes his hand. Begrudgingly, Jennifer does the same, and Rodney looks away instantly.

“Please don’t,” he murmurs, quieter than she’s ever heard him, and Jennifer dully realises the shuttered look on his face is shame. Shame, at his changed body, at his uninhibited reaction to the press of her mouth against the thing that gives him sustenance, at all of this, that he cannot control. Her Rodney, unable to meet her eyes.

“Don’t you dare,” she whispers, touching his chin, his cool skin odd and oh, his slit-pupiled eyes are strange but the darting brilliance behind them is all Rodney. “Sweetheart,” she breathes, and he turns his head back to look at her in shock.

“You can’t call me that,” he replies, and Jennifer decides, abruptly and with no remorse, fuck it. She surges forward, has time for only a moment to wonder if Wraith do this before she kisses him square on the mouth.

“Fucking call you whatever I want, and you know it,” she says when she pulls away for breath, and coaxes his lips open with her tongue. And he kisses just like he did before he went away, evidently he hasn’t been making out with Queen Death while he was gone, and isn’t _that_ a disgusting thought.

“You must be the first person in history to call a Wraith _sweetheart_ ,” he replies, and doesn’t even tell her off for cursing, and isn’t it typical of him, to start talking again when he could be kissing her.

“I don’t see a Wraith,” she tells him sharply, and his eyes widen, his pupils flickering at the edges like they’re expanding and contracting too rapidly to see. “Just my boyfriend.” It must be the right thing to say, because he’s got one hand on her hip and the other on the back of her head, drawing her closer.

“Your boyfriend,” he murmurs, sounding awestruck. “Yours.” And okay, maybe it’s some Wraith thing, this preoccupation with ownership, but whatever, she’ll run with it.

“Mine,” she agrees, and takes his lips again, and he’s not shy anymore. His talons are catching on her hair and digging into her skin and she loves it, pulls him as close to her as she can, muffling his noises and her own with the fervour of kissing. At least, until the curve of his throat fascinates her, and the line of his jaw, and she just _has_ to investigate.

“Jennifer,” Rodney says against her lips, shudders when she bites down his neck, and other things, _please more please_ , her man, all sharpness and fire and yes, this is why they called him Quicksilver, how could he be called anything else, except –

“ _Rodney_ ,” she gasps, and reclaims his lips, tastes the alien bite of his mouth and swallows the little noises he near purrs, and this is familiar, this she can do. She has one hand on the back of his neck and the other tangled around his feeding hand, the fingers of his off hand on her ass in a squeeze as fond as it has been missed.

He makes a low noise in his throat, and it takes Jennifer a moment to realise it’s from pain rather than desire. She does have him shoved rather hard up against the wall, and his wounds are still leaking blackish blood, and he has been rather grievously injured. She puts his feeding hand against her chest, and he immediately pulls it away.

“No,” Rodney growls, and tears his mouth away.

“Don’t you dare die on me,” she orders him. Rodney screws up his face like someone’s just presented him with a lemon.

“I’m not going to die,” he says, his tone suggesting Jennifer take up a new career as the city idiot.

“You’re losing too much blood,” she retorts. “For God’s sake, I am a doctor, you know. And you’re going to bleed out unless you stop being a pigheaded _ass_ and do as you’re told.” He’s wavering, she can see it.

“We’ve never done it like this before,” he points out, rather like he did the time she’d convinced him to fuck her from behind, the same want mixed with apprehension and a healthy dose of ‘this can’t be happening’.

“There’s a first time for everything,” Jennifer says waspishly. “now, if you would, before I grow old…?”

“Ha ha,” Rodney says dryly, and Jennifer throws caution to the wind, lifts his feeding hand and butterflies kisses against his palm. Rodney jerks underneath her, and there is hunger in his eyes now, as bright as flame.

“I accept every part of you, Meredith Rodney McKay,” she tells him, ignoring the roll of his eyes at his first name. “Even the parts you don't like yourself. Now take it, take what you need, and if you feel guilty about it later I will punch you.”

Jennifer sees the exact moment he makes up his mind, the way his eyes change. He rips his feeding hand away from her tongue, slams it up against her chest, and sinks his nails deep. Jennifer feels it almost instantly, the pull, the drag of it, the blinding pain and the screams he swallows with his mouth, the roar deep in his throat she gasps into her lungs like oxygen.

He’s dragging it out of her, inch by agonising inch, the life force she clings to so tenaciously, flowing into him, knitting his wounds. She kisses him until her head starts to swim and her vision starts to grey out at the edges, until her hands go slack on his shoulders and she starts to fall away. The footsteps are like gunshots outside or it might just be her heart banging away in her ears, slowing, slowing, almost gone and she follows it down, to a place of dark and cool.

The force of his hand pulling away from her chest brings her back to herself. Jennifer sags in his embrace, and the footsteps are moving on, and he has her in his arms and he just put her through hell and she’d do it again for him in a heartbeat. It still hurts, a lingering echo of pain, and she could just about faint from the exhaustion of it but Rodney’s as hard as a rock underneath her and she might die if he doesn’t touch her. She gets one hand down his BDUs and strokes the length of him hot and rigid; Rodney bucks up into her touch but he’s shaking his head, the sensory pits flaring, his eyes half lidded and bright.

“Not like that, honey,” he murmurs, the endearment unfamiliar. And though Jennifer can’t bring herself to notice right now, she will later, will relive every moment. Rodney manipulates her in his embrace until he has her where he wants her, until he can lift her exhausted body in his arms, grinding her against his cock. And this, yes, this, this is so much better, all Jennifer has to do is cling onto his shoulders which haven’t changed in the slightest, big and broad and fucking perfect and just _feel_ , already close from the months of being without him and the ridge of his cock pressing against her clit and this won’t take long at all.

Jennifer comes on a slow, rolling wave, her fingers bitting deep into the leather of Rodney’s coat, her hips stuttering against his, her teeth sunk into his neck to keep quiet. He keeps moving, keeps arching up against her, and it’s been too long since she rode him, took her pleasure from his body underneath her, and that’s exactly what she’s going to do as soon as they’re back in Atlantis and bare and writhing in his bed.

“Made me come, Rodney,” she tells him, her teeth nibbling at his ear, just like she’d told him that first time when they were a little younger and both human, when he’d looked so absurdly pleased to have got her off that he’d done it another three times before she’d shoved him on his back and returned the favour. Tunney’s stupid private jet, a thousand years ago.

“You’re insane,” Rodney bites out, but he’s bucking underneath her and dragging the air into his lungs in gulps. “Don’t you know what I am now, you idiot beautiful girl –”

Jennifer threads her fingers idly through his ivory hair, scratching at his scalp. “Still mine,” she tells him affectionately, and lifts his feeding hand up to tongue at the slit there. Rodney shakes and he’s got her in a death grip and she thought it wasn’t possible to love him this much. “Always gonna be mine, cleverman, now come for me –”

He roars, and she really hopes the Genii have moved on, because it’s not exactly quiet. Not that Rodney was ever quiet, before; he talked and whined and bitched and he is perfect, he is amazing, not that she’s going to tell him any of that, his ego’s big enough already. He’s tense underneath her like he’s done something wrong, like the sight of him coming didn’t make her want to go again, like green skin and white hair and Wraith eyes could ever distract her from the fact that he is Rodney.

Light spills over them both, and Jennifer shields Rodney instinctively, but it’s just John and Teyla, P-90s in hand and smirks present. Well, John is smirking. Teyla just looks serene.

“If you two are quite done in there…” John says, insinuation clear in his tone. Rodney is flushing dark green, mute with outrage, and Jennifer glares up at John with silent recrimination.

“I told you to wait, John,” Teyla says in her quiet way, the glimpse of Steelflower under her skin as present as ever. Jennifer does not need to be Wraith, to always be aware of Steelflower. “You should have listened.”

“No shit!” he exclaims, and Jennifer grins, looks up at the two of them limned in sunlight coming through the open door, Ronon pacing outside.

“We were merely discussing the merits of hockey versus football, John,” she says blandly, ignoring Rodney’s splutter. “And we have not quite completed our debate. Come back in ten minutes,” she tells them, and pulls the cupboard door closed on the melodious tones of Rodney’s laughter.

“The Genii could return at any minute!” she can hear John pouting, and that’s okay, that she can walk out of here listening to his bitching with a come stain on her BDUs and the ache of talon marks on her hips, as long as she can walk out of here with Rodney’s hand in hers.

“Come on, cleverman,” Jennifer tells him, his eyes shining in the dark like a cat’s and her heart so full it’s brimming over. “Let’s go home.”


	2. two

Carson’s flashing a light in his right eye and Rodney isn’t appreciating it in the slightest. He crosses his arms over his chest. “Check Jennifer out first,” he says waspishly. Carson sighs and looks in the other eye.

“You were shot, Rodney,” he says, except his accent makes it sound more like ‘yeh were shot, Rodneh’. It’s only endearing because of how much Rodney missed that stupid accent after Carson died, and he’d certainly never tell the other man that. Carson would be insufferable. “Jennifer said you took four bullets to the chest. That means a thorough check up and you know it, regardless of your… _augmented_ healing abilities.”

“Three to the chest and one to the abdomen, Carson,” Jennifer puts in helpfully from where she’s perched on a gurney, checking her own blood pressure, while Ronon, Teyla and John look like they’d rather be anywhere but here. But maybe that’s just general ‘fuck the infirmary’ face rather than ‘watching our Wraith pal get checked out face’. Who knows.

Jennifer pulls the stethoscope out of her ears and tears the Velcro cuff from her arm. “Huh. Eighty on forty-five.”

“Even I know that’s too low,” Rodney snips just for the sake of saying something, and also because he’s concerned. Jennifer shrugs.

“I’m asymptomatic,” she tries. Carson doesn’t look up from where he’s taking Rodney’s pulse, but he’s listening all the same.

“You’re pale and clammy, and you barely managed to walk in here without falling over,” he retorts. “Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes, lass.”

“Listen to the doc, Doc,” John puts in, and Rodney’s honestly surprised the other man doesn’t get scorched from the sheer heat in the glare Jennifer sends in his general direction.

“Two words regarding your next physical, Colonel: prostate exam,” she hisses, and Rodney winces in sympathy even as he considers its kind of weird that his former girlfriend has probably had her fingers up his best friend’s ass. But that’s Atlantis. Everyone’s weirdly and slightly incestuously familiar with one another at this point.

“I’ll just be over here, minding my own business,” John says rather hastily. Rodney snickers, and tries to ignore, as he knows everyone else tries to, that it often comes out odd and distorted, tonal in that distinct way that is undeniably Wraith.

“Shut up, Rodney,” Carson says; rather unfairly, Rodney feels, although as usual Carson has failed to notice his weird Wraith laugh. Maybe all the time Carson spent with Michael has made him immune to it. Or maybe that’s just Carson. “Now take off your shirt.” Rodney stiffens.

“Do I have to?” he asks, fully aware he’s whining and not giving a damn. Let them think it’s usual McKay bitching and not unwillingness to expose his greenish skin and prominent spinal knobs to his friends. “You don’t need to examine me, I’m healed, I’ve fed, Carson. Oh, stop it,” he says irritably when his team all flinch like he’s just confessed to a fondness for skinning babies. “On Jennifer. That’s why she’s all shaky and pale. She made me.”

“She _made you_ ,” Carson says, still somehow managing to phrase the statement like a question on the strength of his eyebrows alone. “Did she force you, then? Did she pin you down and demand you feed upon her?”

Actually, that had been kind of how it went.

“No, I just said I’d never put out again unless he did,” Jennifer says blithely, and she’s keeping her tone light but she’s really starting to look dreadful now, sweat standing out on her brow.

John clears his throat like he’d rather be anywhere else. Well, except maybe a hive ship, or having dinner with his former in-laws, but definitely like he’d rather Teyla beat the shit out of him with her bantos rods than be stuck in this conversation. Rodney can sympathise.

“We’ve talked about this, Jennifer,” Carson says in exasperation, like the whole of AR-1 isn’t trying to edge surreptitiously out of the infirmary. “You ought to be monitored during the feeding process. We still don’t know the full extent of the trauma it can have on the body –”

“Jesus, Carson, he had _four_ bullet wounds,” Jennifer mutters. “What did you expect me to do, let him bleed to death? And we’ve been over this half a dozen times already. We know the effect it has on the body. It hurts like a bitch and then it makes me shaky and diaphoretic and hungry as hell. Speaking of which, can I have –”

“No, you may not,” Carson snaps. “Rodney, come back here.” Damn. And he’s been so close to escaping. Escaping the reminder that he’s stuck like this and the only person he can feed off of without killing them is Jennifer.

Although, she’s not looking too good.

“Stop telling her off and look after her,” Rodney mumbles. Carson throws his hands up in exasperation.

“I haven’t even inspected your wounds yet. You were meant to be taking your shirt off.” Rodney winces; it doesn’t escape either of his doctors.

“I’ll do it, Carson,” Jennifer says; Rodney hadn’t noticed her standing, but she is, and she’s swaying on her feet.

“It’s okay,” Rodney tells her, shrugging out of his coat. Jennifer sits back down at once looking rather relieved, and also rather green around the edges. “Now that the others are gone – I mean, now that we’ve got some privacy, honestly, Carson, do you just let the whole expedition traipse through here or something, have you never heard of doctor-patient confidentiality –” And there’s comfort, familiarity, in ranting at Carson, in throwing the occasional derisive remark at Jennifer too, because it wouldn’t be fair to leave her out, now, would it?

It gets him through Carson examining his torso with hands that feel too warm even through the gloves, through watching Jennifer’s eyes droop and thinking, I did that, I hurt her. He can see dark rusty stains on the front of her plain black T-shirt where he’d gotten a bit carried away and sank his talons in – Christ. He’s meant to protect her, to love her, not drain her and cause her pain.

“No point putting you under a scanner,” Carson tells him as Rodney puts his shirt back on. “You’re a hundred percent healed, not even any scars. Jennifer did a fine job of patching you up.” There’s no response. “Jennifer?” Carson barks, and Rodney looks past him to see her toppled over onto her side, out like a light on the gurney.

“Is she okay?” Rodney asks, watching Carson put his fingers to her throat. “Carson?”

“Just asleep,” Carson says, the words coming out on the exhale like a sigh. “She’ll be fine. Still, I want to run some tests –”

“Dr Beckett!” someone shouts, and a gurney’s being wheeled in along with several pairs of footsteps and the sickly-sweet smell of burned flesh. Carson’s head whips around, clearly torn between the two patients that need him, and Rodney sighs.

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” he tells Carson. “Go fix whoever’s electrocuted themselves this time.” Carson smiles grimly.

“If it’s Marks again…” he sighs, but his feet are already moving. Jennifer is the same, Rodney thinks, drawn towards disaster, hands outstretched to heal.

“Rodney.” He looks up, from Jennifer’s sleeping face, to Carson paused in the doorway out to the main infirmary where someone is dying, waiting for him. “I know she wants to help you,” Carson says, suddenly and unexpectedly serious. “But don’t let her do herself an injury, Rodney. She’s only human.”

And isn’t that the problem.

 

So maybe in Carson’s opinion ‘keeping an eye’ on Jennifer was more ‘stay in the infirmary and keep out of trouble’, rather than Rodney’s own personal definition of ‘tuck her into bed in her own quarters and lurk in the armchair like an oversized life sucking scarecrow’. Whatever.

Rodney brings Jennifer back to her quarters, with her cradled gently in his arms like a child. There aren’t many residents of Atlantis still awake at this time of night, but people don’t even look anymore. The sight of a Wraith carrying an unconscious woman is cause for horror out there in the galaxy, but not here. Here, it’s just McKay carrying Keller to her quarters after she fell asleep over a microscope again.

(It hadn’t always been like that. It had taken months for Ronon to be able to trust him, once it became clear that Rodney wasn’t going to revert back. Teyla had been able to trust him for her own sake almost at once, but it had been weeks before she’d allowed Torren near him. That first time, when the kid had taken one look at him and his eyes had widened and he’d screeched _Uncle Rodney_ and flung himself into Rodney’s arms – well. Rodney is grateful that the assorted Atlantis staff present, all forty-three of them, are decent enough to not mention how ‘Uncle Rodney’ bawled like a baby and hugged Torren for a full ten minutes straight.

And as for John… that’s still weird.)

Jennifer stirs in his arms when Rodney opens the door to her quarters. “What’s happening?” she asks, and Rodney turns on the lights, looks down at her while she blinks, her pupils contracting under the sudden influx of light.

“You fell asleep in the infirmary,” he replies, and sets her down on her bed. Jennifer smiles up at him, sleepy and warm and impossibly human.

She never feels too hot under his hands, like most people do. She feels _right_.

“I’m hungry,” she tells him, and the part of him that is still (and probably always will be) Quicksilver revels at the order, even though it’s no kind of order at all. But he knows what she means.

“I’ll bring you something,” he promises her, even knowing she’ll probably be asleep again by the time he gets back.

He finds John, Teyla, and Ronon in the mess. “Late night team meeting I missed the invite to?” he jokes, to cover the instinctive fear that it was him they were discussing. He’d blame being Wraith, except he was a neurotic bastard even before they messed with his genes.

“We were discussing today’s mission,” Teyla says calmly. “We have all noticed more rogue Genii soldiers of late.”

“Seems Ladim can’t keep as tight a hold on things as he thought,” John puts in. Rodney hesitates, wringing his hands.

“Well, uh, that all sounds very military and not at all my thing, so I’m going to go, good night all –”

“You don’t have to go,” Ronon rumbles, and Rodney pauses.

“Seriously?” he asks, delighted, and after a moment Ronon nods. “Thanks!” And Rodney means it. Because of all his team, it took Ronon the longest to be cool with his new… form.

Aside from Rodney himself, of course. He still freaks his shit on a regular basis about having to suck the life out of his ex-girlfriend to survive. “That means a – that’d be great. But I promised I’d bring Jennifer something back to eat. You know, it’s not like she can, uh, eat me.” And there’s the staring again. “You know, like I can eat her? Wraith? Remember?” And because he’s stupid, he raises his feeding hand and waggles it hello.

“We did not forget,” Teyla says gravely, but there is a smile hovering somewhere around the corner of her mouth.

“Kinda hard not to,” John agrees sagely. Ronon shrugs.

“The chicken’s good,” he offers, and Rodney hears it for what it is: _this is weird, I don’t know what to say to you, you’re still my friend._

“Thanks,” he says instead, and gives them an awkward little wave goodbye, just like he would have done before, because he might be a half breed alien monster a million light years from home, but at least he has his team.

Sure enough, when he gets back with a container of chicken stew, a sandwich, three pieces of fruit and a chocolate energy bar, she’s asleep. On top of the sheets, like a kid, still in her boots. Rodney grins fondly, and sets the food down, dropping to his knees by the side of the bed. Gently, he unties her left boot and loosens the laces.

“What are you doing?” Her voice is weary, but alert; Rodney freezes in the process of easing her boot from her foot. He looks up to see bright, keen, bewildered eyes.

“Nothing!” he replies, and it comes out too fast, too defensive. Jennifer narrows her eyes at him.

“If the Wraith gave you a weird foot fetish to go along with everything else –” she begins, and Rodney drops the boot, waves his hands around for good measure to demonstrate how wrong she is. He can suddenly, vividly, remember what had happened earlier on the planet, in that wretched little cupboard. The first action he’d gotten in months, and it had been in a damn cupboard, with the woman he’s not supposed to want.

“No! Just, uh. I thought you’d be more comfortable without your shoes on. If, you know, you’d fallen asleep.” Rodney’s acutely aware of how weird this is, him on his knees by her bed, Jennifer on it, half lying down but propped up on her elbows, peering at him.

“I’m not asleep,” she points out, and Rodney can feel himself flushing.

“Yes, I can see that,” he replies, and makes to rise up onto his feet. His knees are protesting. Apparently being a Wraith can’t fix everything.

“Stay there,” Jennifer says, her voice quiet but firm. Rodney swallows.

“Excuse me?” he asks, but there’s no heat to it.

“You heard,” Jennifer says. “Stay there. On your knees.”

“For how long?” Rodney hears himself say. There’s an odd directness to Jennifer’s gaze, and it strikes something in him, deep down in a place he doesn’t want to admit. Like he doesn’t really want to stay on his knees but he will, if she wants him to, because she wants him to.

The moment breaks. “Oh, get up here,” she sighs. “I’m no good at this shit. What did you bring me?”

“Here,” Rodney replies, and stands, passes her the tray. He watches Jennifer devour nearly everything on the tray with more than a twinge of regret. He misses food, the ease of it, the uncomplicated pleasure. Life was much simpler in the days when he didn’t run the risk of killing someone every time he needed sustenance.

“You’re hovering,” she says, when she’s almost finished. Rodney flushes. He has been, standing over her like a carrion bird lurking over a carcass.

“I told Carson I’d keep an eye on you,” he says apologetically. Jennifer huffs.

“I’m a doctor,” she reminds him – unnecessarily. “I can take care of myself.”

“Carson didn’t seem to think so,” Rodney mumbles, because he is an idiot. Jennifer’s eyes flash, and she drops the core of the weird apple-orange hybrid thing onto the tray.

“I won’t dignify that with a response,” she retorts, setting the tray over on her desk, and stepping into the small bathroom attached to her quarters. Rodney can hear, with his enhanced Wraith senses, the run of water, the sound of clothes being removed. God. Jennifer taking her clothes off.

Rodney hasn’t seen her naked for months, since before he was taken. Since that last, feverish night they’d spent together, before Dust and his clevermen had transformed him into one of them, at least on the outside. When they’d all finally made it back to Atlantis, Jennifer had made it clear she was still interested, but Rodney couldn’t risk it. He might still need to feed on her while she and Carson kept working on Guide’s retrovirus, but he couldn’t be her boyfriend, not anymore, not after this. And the thought of her with anyone else is a knife twisting in his chest but he has to bear it, can’t risk hurting her, can’t –

“Are we going to talk about what happened today?” Jenifer asks as she steps back into the room, drawing his eyes sharply back to her. Rodney swallows. The action is redundant, really, but it’s a habit. She’s wearing sleep shorts and a black tank top, and it’s probably not meant to be sexy but it’s familiar, from the nights they’ve spent together, and he knows what’s underneath it. Rodney’s palms prickle; he clasps his hands hastily behind his back.

“When I fed on you?” he asks, but he knows that’s not what she means. Jennifer huffs and throws herself down on the bed, and stares at him pointedly for a long minute before shaking her head.

“If you’re not going to lie down then pull up a chair, it hurts my neck to look up at you.” She waits until he’s (reluctantly) dragged a chair over to the side of the bed before she continues. “That too, but I was more referring to the part where we got each other off and then you refused to look at me all the way back to the ‘gate.”

“I held your hand,” Rodney points out automatically.

“You held my hand with your off hand,” Jennifer corrects keenly, and Rodney has to fight not to instinctively flinch his feeding hand away, out of her sight. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that. But, uh, I just don’t get how grinding on each other in a cupboard fits into your whole ‘I’m not safe, we can’t be together anymore’ speech.”

“I didn’t plan it!” Rodney exclaims, his voice rising on the end of the sentence in outrage. “I didn’t set out in the morning thinking, hmm, might feel up my ex-girlfriend in a cupboard today! Oh yes, what a marvellous idea!”

Jennifer’s smiling, like his exasperation pleases her. “I don’t remember you having much of a problem with it at the time,” she says, and Rodney throws up his hands. He doesn’t start pacing, but it’s a near thing.

“Well, of course I didn’t, it’s you,” he snaps, and then shuts his mouth hard, but the damage is done. Jennifer’s eyes light up like he’s presented her with a brand new piece of weird alien medical technology to play with.

“You want me,” she purrs, as sinuous and single minded as a Wraith queen, just for a moment. Rodney swallows hard again.

“That’s, uh. That’s never been the issue,” he begins, and he can’t go on. Not when she’s doing that, God, trailing her fingertips over her wrists, her forearms, her elbows. It could almost be innocent, except for the way she’s looking at him. “Jennifer,” he rasps, and his voice has dropped, his heart rate has picked up, the handmouth is fluttering. All textbook signs of Wraith arousal, and the sizable hard-on he’s sporting in his BDUs is probably considerable evidence, too. Christ, he wants her.

“Then what is it?” Jennifer asks, and she’s moved up to her biceps, to trace the faint curve of muscle under pale skin.

“You know what it is,” Rodney barks. “I’m a Wraith, Jennifer, it’s not safe – _for the love of God will you stop doing that_?” Jennifer halts her fingers from where they’d been about to glide gracefully over her clavicles.

“What’s the matter, Rodney?” she asks, and he is up out of the chair now, pacing back and forward like a caged animal. “

“What’s _right_?” he bites out. “I’m a Wraith. I am literally the monster that parents tell their children about at night. And you… you can’t want this.” And there it is, all his fears and terrors out in the open and distilled into four little words. And Jennifer, God help him, Jennifer just smiles and holds out her hands.

“I want you,” she says, and the words are fire in his veins. “Wraith or human or anything in the middle, I don’t care. Just you.”

Rodney’s on her before he has a chance to think. Jennifer gasps, but he can tell she’s not afraid; the signs of arousal often mimic the body’s reactions to fear, but not this time, not when he can smell her, nearly taste the heat of her want in his sensory pits. She’s not lax underneath him, no, she’s wrapped her arms around his shoulders and is cooing happy noises into his hair.

Rodney gets an arm around her shoulders and just breathes, his nose pressed into her neck, her pulse thrumming against his mouth. Wraith have sharp teeth – _he_ has sharp teeth, and he could probably do some serious damage to her without having to do much at all, her pretty throat torn out, her blood running down his face. Jennifer is literally baring her throat to a predator, trusting Rodney not to hurt her, and the sheer weight of that trust takes his breath away.

When he can trust himself to look at her without crying or doing something else as equally humiliating, Rodney lifts his head and looks her in the eye. Jennifer smiles and wriggles underneath him, earning her a low growl that Rodney didn’t entirely consent to making.

“You’re heavier now,” she comments, stroking a cautious hand over his shoulder. Rodney shrugs under her hand and hopes she doesn’t go for the spine, because he just might not be able to control himself if she does.

“Wraith bone is denser,” he mutters, and Jennifer grins.

“I know,” she replies, and Rodney could hit himself, of course she knows. Hell, she probably knows more about his physiology than he does. At least that much hasn’t changed.

“Sorry,” he says, ducking his head, which of course doesn’t help in the slightest because it brings him straight to eye level with her breasts.

“I’ve always found it a bit cute when you make an ass of yourself, to be honest,” she says, and Rodney can’t help it, he smiles, even knowing it shows his creepy Wraith teeth.

“Only a bit?” he asks wryly, and very gently sets his chin down on Jennifer’s stomach so he can look up at her while she talks.

“I take it this means we’re back together?” she asks. “Because, you know, while I’m not averse to fooling around with hot strangers in leather jackets, I kind of miss my boyfriend.” Rodney has to look at the bookcase to calm himself down; the sight of all those faux-scientific medical books makes him feel much less likely to fall at her feet and profess undying love.

“I don’t know,” he ponders, and Jennifer’s face clouds over just for a moment before she cottons on that he’s joking. “Your boyfriend sounds like kind of an asshole. And stupid, to leave you all alone where anyone could come along and find you.”

“He is stupid,” Jennifer agrees blithely. “And he can be an asshole. But I wouldn’t trade him for anyone. He’s very smart, sometimes, and good with his hands. Always handy to have a man around the house with two Ph.Ds. and a knack for Ancient technology.”

“So I’m told,” Rodney says soberly, but he can only keep the stoic expression up for a moment before he’s smiling.

Jennifer’s smiling, too. And he’s here, and he’s with her, and they’re safe, at least for now. And what more could he ask for.


	3. three

Jennifer observes Rodney happily basking in the warmth of her compliments for a few moments before she adds a calculated, “Oh, and he goes down on a girl like he was born to do it.”

Rodney’s head flies up and there is a familiar light in his Wraith eyes. “Is that a hint?” he asks, voice just a touch more tonal than before. Jennifer shrugs.

“Would I do that?” she asks, and Rodney seems to have got over his aversion to showing his teeth because he grins, sharp and dangerous and more than a little wolf-like. Jennifer likes it. She’d hated his scared, tentative little smiles of the last few weeks, his mouth tightly closed to avoid alarming people with his teeth.

“Of course you would,” he says dismissively, and his sharp nailed fingers are at the waistband of her shorts. Jennifer sucks in a breath, because even through the thin fabric of her clothes, she can feel the coolness of his skin, the points of his nails.

“Rodney.” He looks up, looking very much like the Wraith-cat that caught the human-canary. “We are back together now, right?” She feels stupid even asking it, but Rodney’s pupils expand like she’s said something very right.

“I’m the only leather-jacketed hottie you’ll be picking up any time soon,” he says, trying for bravado, and Jennifer sighs, slaps at him over the head without much force at all.

“So that’s a yes?” she guesses, and Rodney huffs.

“Of course, yes. Boyfriend and girlfriend again – God, that sounds so juvenile, why aren’t there better words for this sort of thing –”

Jennifer sits up and kisses him, severing off the flow of words mid-sentence. It’s different now than it was in the cupboard; she can see every inch of his face, his closed eyes, the sensory pits flaring gently with his breathing.

He opens his eyes suddenly and pulls away; his expression can only be described as repulsed. Jennifer sits up in concern. "What is it?" she asks, laying a concerned hand on his arm; Rodney flinches it away. He looks absolutely shattered.

“I saw me,” he says darkly. “I saw a picture of me in your mind as you were seeing it. This is – God. This is so weird.”

“Are you kidding?” Jennifer exclaims. “You heard a telepathic echo of what I was thinking? That is so cool!” Rodney is shaking his head.

“I saw me,” he repeats, teeth clenched around each word. “Warts and fangs and sensory pits and all. It’s disgusting. _I’m_ disgusting. This is never going to work.” He starts to pull away, and Jennifer catches him by the arm. He is tense under her grip; it would take him no effort at all to pull away, but he doesn’t, as though really, deep down, he doesn’t want to.

“Please don’t go,” Jennifer requests quietly. “I don’t think you’re disgusting, Rodney.”

“Well, you should,” he snaps, that familiar ire flaring up in him as easily as breathing. “You know, there’s a reason Wraith don’t fuck humans that often. They think humans are animals. Another species. You – this is – we shouldn’t –”

“Do you think I’m an animal?” Jennifer asks evenly. Rodney gapes at her.

“Of course not! _I’m_ the animal! _I’m_ the _thing._ You should be with a real person, not a Wraith with the memories of a person who is now, for all intents and purposes, dead.”

“You take that back,” Jennifer snaps, her voice low and deadly and surprising them both. “ _You take that back_. You’re not dead.”

Her harshness has taken some of the wind out of his sails, but he’s not to be deterred. “Well, it’s true!” he defends, and oh, she could punch him, he’s such an ass sometimes.

“No, it’s not!” Jennifer snaps, and surges up to take him by the shoulders and shake him firmly. “These are Rodney McKay’s shoulders,” she says firmly. “I know them. I’ve clung onto them while he’s been inside of me.” Rodney jerks like she’s just smacked him with a shock prod, and all the anger drains out of Jennifer in a heartbeat.

“Jennifer!” he says, utterly scandalised. “You can’t just say things like that!”

“If you’re going to be an ass and say stupid things, then I can say whatever I like in response,” she retorts, and leans up to peck a quick kiss on his cheek. “And this is Rodney McKay’s stupid face,” she continues affectionately. Rodney's eyebrows lift and he rises to the bait, just as she knew he would.

“Hey!” Jennifer grins and reaches towards his belt.

“And _this_ is –”

“All right!” Rodney coughs, waving her off with both hands rather quickly. “I get it. I’m Rodney McKay. No need to get handsy.” Jennifer smirks.

“You like it when I get handsy,” she reminds him, and Rodney clears his throat.

“Perhaps, ah. It is possible that maybe I do.”

“And I think you’ll find it’s Dr Meredith Rodney McKay,” she adds, and Rodney glares. “Two Ph.Ds.,” she amends, and his ruffled feathers settle.

“That’s better,” he says, slightly mollified. “Although if you could never call me Meredith again, that would be great.”

“Rodney,” Jennifer says softly, just to draw the syllables out, to taste them on her tongue.

“Jennifer,” he replies, his eyes glitter bright and so him, as pure Rodney as that first moment she’d known that there was something, small and glowing, buried deep in her heart, and all for him.

_“You’re not very good at this, are you?”_

_“Uh, no, no, I’m not.”_

“Would it be incredibly inappropriate to inform you I am positively dizzy with lust right now?” she asks him. He shrugs.

“I’m used to inappropriate, dating you,” he replies, and Jennifer hits him with a pillow before she has a chance to think better of it. Rodney grins, all danger and shark teeth. “Oh, now you’re gonna get it,” he says, the intonation and diction and syntax all human, and how anyone could mistake him for Wraith, Jennifer doesn’t know. No Wraith has ever burned as brightly as Rodney.

He pounces, and Jennifer doesn’t even try to flee, pinned underneath him. He leans over her, getting into her space, the scent of him still somehow coffee and engine fluid and Rodney, just like it was before. “Hello,” she says, examining in detail his slit-pupiled eyes and sensory pits, the hint of pale stubble on his jaw,

“Hi,” he rasps back, a single syllable, and Jennifer leans up to meet him halfway for a kiss. “Sure you’re up to this?” he asks between kisses. “I mean, you looked pretty tired before.” Jennifer arches a brow.

“Up for what?” she inquires, and predictably Rodney turns what she’s sure is the Wraith equivalent for pink, sitting back on his haunches and wringing his hands.

“Well, I just meant… we’re on a bed, and, and, we’re back together, and evidently you’re not horrified by the fact that I’ve been turned into a Wraith, so I thought – you know, if you’re up to it, if you’re not that’s fine, but I mean, if it’s an option, we might –” Jennifer grins.

“McKay,” she drawls, just like she’s done so many times before, cutting him off before he digs himself any deeper, and Rodney’s mouth snaps shut. “If you’re asking if I want to have sex, the answer is yes.” And oh, the awe on his face, as exactly the same as the first time she saw it –

“ _Oh, you want to have a_ drink _.”_

“Oh, good,” Rodney says, sounding dazed and slightly bewildered. “That’s… good.”

“It is,” Jennifer agrees, and tugs him back down to settle between her thighs, to run her hands over his shoulders. She strokes a hand down his spine and he shudders. “What? Bad?”

“Good,” he bites out, and Jennifer lifts the hem of his shirt to press her hands against cool skin. “Sensitive.”

“The bumps?” Jennifer guesses, touching one experimentally with her fingertip. Rodney nods, his eyes slipping shut, and Jennifer seizes the opportunity. She twists, using her hips to flip him over, just like Teyla’s been teaching her – although Jennifer thinks that move was designed for overpowering assailants rather than turning the tables on Wraith boyfriends. “You snooze, you lose, McKay,” Jennifer says triumphantly, but her amusement dies away at the expression on Rodney’s face. He’s looking up at her, awed, as though he can’t believe she’s real, like every dream and every fantasy he’s ever had has been dumped in his lap.

Some women might find it oppressive, Jennifer knows, the intensity of that worship, but she’s not one of them. She’s gone without love too many times before to not warm to the strength of Rodney’s affection, even if she can’t tell how much of it is Rodney himself and how much is the Wraith compulsion to submit to a ‘queen’. Jennifer is no queen, but she is female, and the Wraith desire to cherish and obey the women of their species is one of their defining attributes.

“What are you thinking about?” Rodney asks softly, and Jennifer banishes the dark thoughts. This is real enough, her and Rodney, solid and tangible. It will have to suffice.

“You,” she replies, and leans down to kiss his nose, his fluttering eyelids, the curve of his gently receding hairline. He is still, accepting her touch without qualm, his hands loose by his sides, but his body is as rigid as a board. “Rodney,” she whispers, and Rodney makes a soft hmm in response, his eyes closed. “I want to fuck you.”

“I know,” he replies. “I can smell you.” Jennifer pauses.

“Really?” she asks. “I mean, I know Wraith sense of smell is much more acute than a human’s, but, wow.” Rodney cracks open one eye.

“I’m beginning to think you only keep me around for my sensory pits,” he says dramatically. Jennifer scowls, but she’s smiling, too. “Did you have a xenophilia problem before you came to Pegasus, or is it a recent development?”

“Quite recent,” Jennifer says, straight-faced. “Over the last few months, really.”

“Ha ha,” Rodney retorts sourly. “You joke, but it’s a real issue.”

“I have no doubt of it,” Jennifer tells him, and leans down until she’s lying along the length of his body, her lips at his neck so she can nuzzle his ear with her nose.

“Trying to soothe the savage beast, huh?” he asks, but there’s no real heat in it.

“That’s music you’re thinking of,” Jennifer murmurs. “Trust me, you really don’t want me to sing.” Rodney shudders.

“I may have overheard you in the shower some mornings,” he admits. “Of course, I think the whole city may have also been privy to that splendid privilege.”

“Only ever for you,” Jennifer assures him. Rodney rolls his eyes.

“How thoughtful,” he comments dryly, but the banter isn’t helping; Jennifer can still feel the tension in him, like just having her close raises the hackles up on the back of his neck. Maybe it does. Maybe Wraith aren’t meant to be skin to skin with humans, aren’t designed to hold them in their arms for anything longer than that last death-embrace. They are writing history, here.

“What do you need?” she asks spontaneously. Rodney makes an undignified noise that appears to be a close relative to a splutter.

“How about to not be a Wraith, for one?” he begins furiously, but Jennifer puts her hand over his mouth; Rodney splutters for a moment more before clamping his mouth shut and subsiding into bitter silence.

“What do you need now, that I can help you with?” she rephrases patiently, and trials taking her hand away. When a full minute has passed but Rodney has said nothing, she chances a look over at his face to find him staring determinedly at the ceiling, his cheeks dark. “What?” she asks, and Rodney mutters something under his breath that may be too quiet for even dogs to detect, but that sounds suspiciously like –

“You want me to sit on your face?” Rodney’s body jerks like she’s just laid paddles on his chest and defibrillated his heart.

“I – that, is –”

“Small words, Rodney,” Jennifer advises, and rubs herself against him a little just to hear him groan. “Try again.”

“Please,” he says instead, and in this light the black in his eyes can almost seem blue. “I want to – I want to get you off. It’ll – ground me. It did before, when I was… human.”

“You’re still human,” Jennifer says sharply, and Rodney looks away; they’re off topic. Jennifer strokes a hand down his face, “Only a lunatic would refuse such an offer,” she tells him, and relishes the faint blush over Rodney’s cheekbones. She strips off her shorts rather matter-of-factly, and it just feels odd to be wearing a shirt and no shorts, so she throws that off too.

She looks back at Rodney, and he’s staring at her, slack-jawed, the awe on his face as familiar as her own skin. He’s flushed and he’s a rather delicate shade of green, and he’s perfect. “Fucking use me,” he blurts out, and then opens and closes his mouth several times like he can’t believe what he’s just said

“Use you,” Jennifer repeats slowly. Rodney twists his head fretfully to the side.

“Don’t… ask me what I meant by it,” he says. Jennifer strokes his hair back from his face.

“Don’t worry, I know what you meant,” she assures him, and leans down, so her breasts brush his chest. “I always know.” She crawls up his body, until she can settle herself over his mouth, brace her hands on the wall, his tongue lapping at her exactly the way she likes it. “God, Rodney,” she sighs, rocking her hips slowly against his face. “I’ve missed this.” Rodney pulls back for a moment.

“I’ve missed this too,” he mutters, his voice half-shamed and half-blissed. Jennifer smiles down at him.

“You made me wait long enough, cleverman,” she says softly, and feels a shudder run through him. “Now get to work.”

He does. He gets his hands on her thighs, spreads her wider, nips at her clit with his dangerously sharp teeth. It should be terrifying, but it’s not. It’s only Rodney, going down on her with the same dedication and curiosity he applies to Ancient technology. It shouldn’t be sexy. But Rodney’s fascination with his work is one of the things that drew her to him in the first place. She kind of has a thing for competency, and Rodney’s one of the most brilliant people she knows.

And he’s single-minded in his task, and it feels so ridiculously good she could combust from the touch of it, and it’s almost enough. The rhythmic swipe of his tongue over her clit, the bite of his claws into her thighs… Jennifer could come from this alone, given a few more minutes, but it doesn’t seem right. She doesn’t want to come without him. They’ve been too long apart already.

“Stop,” she gasps out, and Rodney licks one last time before drawing away. Jennifer shudders.

“Why?” he asks, his voice raw. Jennifer slides down his body, kisses him hard, the taste of herself sweet on his mouth. He arches up into her when she slides her tongue against his.

“I want to fuck you,” she murmurs against his mouth, fighting with the zip of his BDUs. Rodney chokes.

“That’s, well – that sounds great, but what about –”

“Stop arguing,” Jennifer snaps, and wonder of wonders, Rodney’s mouth snaps closed. He doesn’t look entirely pleased about it. “Is it… is it that I made it an order?” Jennifer asks him. Rodney shrugs, and he can’t meet her eyes.

“A left over from when I was Quicksilver,” he mutters. “Wraith hierarchy. Queens – well, you know – they give the orders, and the males–”

“Obey,” Jennifer ends for him. Rodney nods, his gaze fixed firmly on the wall. “It doesn’t have to be like that for us,” Jennifer tells him evenly. Rodney shudders.

“I know, I know, but I –” He can’t find the words.

“It’s a part of you,” Jennifer finishes, and he nods, almost frantic.

“Yes, yes,” he says, his hands fluttering as he talks. Jennifer wants to smile at the sight of him, still fully dressed underneath her, talking with his hands just as he always has. “That’s exactly right, and I _hate_ it, you have no idea how much.”

“It’s okay,” Jennifer tells him. Rodney’s eyes are wild.

“But it’s wrong,” he insists. “I never wanted to be like this.” As if he’s just noticed, he looks down at his hands, the dark talons, the light green skin., staring at them like it’s the first time, like he can’t believe they’re a part of him. “I never wanted this.” Jennifer sighs.

“Sweetheart,” she says softly, and turns his head to face her. His Wraith eyes, and his Rodney heart shining through. “I want you like this.” She lifts his hand up – his feeding hand – to her face, fits it to the curve of her cheek. Rodney looks so tired.

“You’re insane,” he murmurs. Jennifer grins.

“Yeah, and you love it.” Rodney’s own smile is tentative, exposing every sharp tooth, and every hidden terror.

“I do,” he agrees, and when Jennifer kisses him again, this time he does not pull away.

 

There are secrets that Jennifer never intends to tell, that she will hold close to her and guard forever from the world. Like this: in the end, she’d rode Rodney until they both came, his hands on her hips, nails digging into her skin, a delicious counterpoint to the pleasure of his cock inside her. And him looking up at her, eyes wide and full of light, his teeth sinking into his bottom lip to be quiet. “Don’t be quiet,” she’d told him. “I want to hear you when you come.”

“You’ve got a filthy mouth,” he’d groaned, arching up into her.

“Shut up,” she’d snapped, and cracked him hard across the cheek with her hand, an open slap that had sent his head snapping to the side. He hadn’t minded, though. He’d bared his teeth at her in a savage grin.

She hadn’t realised, until then, how angry she’d been. At the Wraith, for taking him and changing what they’d had; at his team, for not rescuing him for so long. Even at Rodney, for letting himself be kidnapped. And the long truth of it, that this new form of Rodney’s turns her on, in a way that feels strange and forbidden but inexorably right. He’s Rodney McKay as much as a part of him will always be Quicksilver, cleverman in the service of Queen Death.

“You’re not hers anymore,” she’d snarled. Rodney had blinked up at her.

“What?” Jennifer had rocked her hips against him harder in punishment, grinding her clit against his pubic bone, and his mouth had fallen open in blissful surprise.

“You’re. Not. Hers,” she’d growled out, her voice almost as low as his. “Death’s. You’re not hers.” Rodney had arched a pale eyebrow.

“Then whose am I?” he’d asked, and Jennifer had leaned down, brushing her breasts against his chest. His nipples haven’t changed that much; there is still pale scatters of hair over his chest.

“Mine,” she’d said, and Rodney had inhaled sharply, his pupils dilating. She can feel the flutter of his handmouth against her hip.

“Say it again, Jennifer, please –” Jennifer can’t stop the snap of her hips against his, so close to coming, so close to him she can feel his heart thundering in his chest. So close, and she never wants to leave.

“Mine, cleverman, mine –” Rodney had gasped, Jennifer had closed her eyes, and the world had gone white.

Curled into Rodney, after, Jennifer could almost drift off against his chest, the strength of his arms ridiculously comforting. “I love your Wraith strength,” Jennifer says drowsily. Rodney chuckles low in his throat, tonal and deep, alien and utterly familiar.

“Don’t mind being manhandled, huh?” he murmurs, brushing a kiss against her forehead, just where her hairline begins.

“Only by you,” she replies, hesitating for a moment. “You really don’t mind when I call you ‘cleverman’?” Pressed so close, she can feel the fine tremor run through his body.

“… No,” Rodney says after a moment. “To tell you the truth, I… I kind of like it.” Jennifer frees a hand to brush through his white hair; he leans into the touch like a cat.

“You need a haircut,” she says fondly. Rodney tips her head up with a finger under the chin so he can look her in the eyes.

“The question is why _you_ like it,” he says. Jennifer shrugs.

“Probably all part of that xenophilia fetish you’re so fond of teasing me about,” she says blithely, and Rodney makes a noise that can only be described as a cackle.

“Hah! I _knew_ it –” And he’s off on one of his patented Rodney McKay rants, about how he’s always known she had a thing for aliens and _it’s weird, Jennifer, really it is, you seriously need to have your head examined –_

But there’s no rancour in it.

“Oh, shut up and kiss me,” Jennifer says just as he’s about to run out of steam. “Don’t suppose you’d like to fuck me from behind before I go to sleep?” Rodney’s eyes widen, but he regains his composure quick enough.

“Well, when you put it like that –”

Rodney flips them over, and Jennifer grins. “Sure you can handle it?” she asks, and Rodney growls low in his throat, cradling her hips in his powerful hands, his claws digging into her skin.

“Yeah, I’m sure. Sorry about the claws by the way.” Jennifer turns her head and looks at him over her shoulder.

“Rodney,” she says clearly. “If you apologise for something I’m into again, I will stab you with a scalpel.” Rodney smirks.

“Fair enough,” he says, and Jennifer grins.

She’s never been so happy to be alive.


End file.
